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8/23/04 Vol. 1 #23

Sort of a normal week for us, just what we needed to recover from vacation! We are beginning the process of putting the farm to bed for the winter that goes on from now until November (I know it is still August but the job has to be started at some point). The first major act is pulling out the first planting of tomatoes and preparing that ground for a winter cover crop. Slowly we will be taking out the summer crops and seeding them down until the whole place is a carpet of brilliant green cover crops. Leeks for Thanksgiving went in the ground along with kale and more radishes.

Speaking of Thanksgiving it is Turkey ordering/reservation time. As I have told folks all season we like to wait until the birds get old enough so that we have a good idea of how many we will actually have in November before we start putting names on paper. Even then things can happen and we can lose birds like we did last year, with four weeks to go, when something got in and killed three birds. There are some changes from last year that you should be aware of. We had a meeting with our processor last week and due to their higher production numbers we are going to have to have our turkeys processed two weeks before Thanksgiving. This means we will have to freeze the birds to hold them until you pick them up on Tuesday November 23rd. There is just no way we can hold them safely as fresh/unfrozen birds that long. We understand if you want a fresh bird and decide to buy one elsewhere. We can tell you that the frozen turkey that we have been eating all year has been fabulous without any loss of quality. It may also be more convenient for some who need to travel with their bird such as one person who plans to take one to France!

The second change this year is in the price per pound of the Heritage turkeys. After crunching the numbers from last years birds we realized that due to the longer growing time, higher initial bird cost and the lower average weights that we needed to raise the price to $4.00 per pound. The Broadbreasted Whites will continue to be $2.50 per pound. That still means that a turkey will cost between $30 and $60 depending on the size. The Heritage birds will run from 7-15 lbs. averaging 10 lbs. and the Broadbreasted birds will run from 15-25 lbs. with an average of about 20 lbs.

This is how to reserve your Thanksgiving bird. We take reservations on a first-come-first-serve basis, those who had a turkey last year will have the first choice. We are announcing this first to those of you receiving the newsletter and then we will put a sign up at market in a few weeks if by chance there are any birds left.